obody would look at it, my dear."

It must have been this first price, undoubtedly, that appealed to Sidney
Dallam, model for all husbands: to Sidney, who had had as much of an
idea of buying in Quicksands as of acquiring a Scotch shooting box. The
"Faraday place" had belonged to the middle ages, as time is reckoned in
Quicksands, and had lain deserted for years, chiefly on account of its
lugubrious and funereal aspect. It was on a corner. Two "for rent" signs
had fallen successively from the overgrown hedge: some fifty feet back
from the road, hidden by undergrowth and in the tenebrous shades of huge
larches and cedars, stood a hideous, two-storied house with a mansard
roof, once painted dark red.

The magical transformation of all this into a sunny, smiling, white
villa with red-striped awnings and well-kept lawns and just enough shade
had done no little towards giving to Lily Dallam that ascendency which
she had acquired with such startling rapidity in the community. When
Honora and Howard drove up to the door in the deepening twilight, every
window was a yellow, blazing square, and above the sound of voices
rose a waltz from "Lady Emmeline" played with vigour on the piano. Lily
Dallam greeted Honora in the little room which (for some unexplained
reason) was known as the library, pressed into service at dinner parties
as the ladies' dressing room.

"My dear, how sweet you look in that coral! I've been so lucky
to-night," she added in Honora's ear; "I've actually got Trixy Brent for
you."

Our heroine was conscious of a pleasurable palpitation as she
walked with her hostess across the little entry to the door of the
drawing-room, where her eyes encountered an inviting and vivacious
scene. Some ten or a dozen guests, laughing and talking gayly, filled
the spaces between the furniture; an upright piano was embedded in a
corner, and the lady who had just executed the waltz had swung around
on the stool, and was smiling up at a man who stood beside her with his
hand in his pocket. She was a decided brunette, neither tall nor short,
with a suggestion of plumpness.

"That's Lula Chandos," explained Lily Dallam in her usual staccato,
following Honora's gaze, "at the piano, in ashes of roses. She's stopped
mourning for her husband. Trixy told her to-night she'd discarded the
sackcloth and kept the ashes. He's awfully clever. I don't wonder that
she's crazy about him, do you? He's standing beside her."

Honora took a go